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I’m not a morning person. But I’ve embraced rising early

By Barry Rueger
Published: Globe and Mail 
December 30, 2022
935 words

This morning, I awoke at 6 a.m. The sun rising over the Atlantic Ocean was barely starting to show itself. It was dark and cold, and I stumbled downstairs to make coffee. And to wonder why, suddenly, I was waking up so darned early, day after day, week after week.

All my life I’ve been a night person, a late sleeper, someone who honestly despises mornings. Over years of working in events, in restaurants, or in radio, I have always been able to arrange my life to avoid rising early. This has been less of a choice than my natural state of being. My body and mind just weren’t designed to switch on before noon.

Now, in Nova Scotia, everything has changed. By 6:30 a.m. most days, my wife Susan and I are both awake, drinking coffee and eating toast in bed, our cat Beatrice between us. We’ll already be working on our laptops, and sharing ideas and plans for the day.

We’re both left asking the same question: What happened? The only change in our lives has been leaving France for a house at the edge of the ocean in Western Head, N.S.

Ours is the last home on the road to the Western Head Lighthouse. The house was built in the late 1800s, then added to several times, and has found the balance between modern living and 19th-century charm. We have many windows, and can see the breakers rolling in from three sides of the house. We hear the wind and the pelting rain, and we’re now awaiting with excitement the first real hurricane-force winds. We can’t help but feel a primal attachment to the weather and a respect for the changes that happen from one hour to the next. You can’t ignore the outdoors in such a place.

Nova Scotia weather is immediate and intense, and despite the cloud, rain and wind, it’s somehow joyful. We can wake up to intense blue skies on one day, or great overwhelming columns of white clouds on the next. We’ve become remarkably conscious of the patterns of light and dark. In a few hours we can go from bright sunshine to pitch-black skies punctuated with thousands of bright shiny stars.

But these mornings! Why so early? It’s not just the weather, the Atlantic, or the dramatic difference between the dark of night and the light of day. It’s not about exchanging urban life for rural. I’ve spent years living in the country, and never before have my nocturnal habits been disturbed.

Part of it is about finding the time to just stop, look, listen and enjoy what each day has to offer us. People here don’t rush, but they are not slow either. Things get done, and get done in about the time you would expect.

Yet every person that we know here will stop what they’re doing, look you in the eye and just settle into a conversation. They’ll ask where you’re from, whether you’re “just visiting” (and that’s the big question in a place where families can trace their history back for centuries) and where, exactly, your house is. The first time that they say, “Oh yeah, I know that house,” it surprises you. The third or fourth time, you accept that this is just how things are.

Since moving here, I’ve learned that if deciding on a plumber or a roofer takes me a month, or six months, that’s okay. I feel like I can slow down, take one step at a time and consider every decision for as long as it takes.

That space, time and freedom means that I can rise early. I can allow myself to just sit and enjoy the sunrise, to think and plan my day, and perhaps allow myself a third cup of coffee just because I have the time.

These early mornings are becoming a ritual. For the first time, I find I have the space to order my thoughts, file some away for later and deal with some right now. And when my brain feels like it’s close to capacity, it gives me permission to stop, look out my windows at the sea, the sky and the sun, and let the true world in front of me clear my head.

Which is wonderful. But why am I waking up so early? I don’t have a fixed schedule. I’m not heading down to the boats. I don’t have a desk job to be at by 9 a.m.

Ultimately it feels as if I’m doing this because it’s what you do if you live here in Western Head, on the coast of the Atlantic, in Nova Scotia. Just as watching the sunrise is now a normal part of each day, aligning my body rhythms with the cycles of the sun and sky is simply the best and healthiest thing to do.

After decades of fighting the morning, I’ve found that it’s something that unexpectedly and definitely works for me. After fitting my life into schedules that perhaps made waking difficult or impossible, I find that I can trust my body and my soul to choose when to rise – and when to sleep.

Now, when I look at the people around me in Western Head, and in Nova Scotia, I understand that we all share the same attachment to the sky, to the sea and to the weather. We’ve learned that our best happiness comes from recognizing the power of our natural world, and from integrating our lives into those rhythms – allowing us to be scheduled by the natural world around us, not by our alarm clocks.

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Shopping for a Greener Home in France

By Barry Rueger and Susan Evans
Published: Asparagus Magazine (PDF Scan)
September 2022
1622 words

It’s been almost 10 months since we arrived in France with hopes of settling here for life. Sometimes it seems incomprehensible that we could have blithely sold up and closed down everything we had going on in Canada, and set off with two suitcases and a cat on a plane to a new life in a new country on a new continent—all taken on trust, sight unseen.

There have been waves of regret and tsunamis of self-doubt, but one thing remains constant: in almost every way, we love this new country of ours, and are resolved to take the time necessary to build a secure sense of belonging, the one missing piece of the puzzle.

For the most part, we feel, France is getting “it” right, culturally, socially, and politically. The French government assumes a position of social, national, and global responsibility that we aren’t used to, coming from a country where ecological tragedy can be brushed aside in favour of preserving a few more years of profit from oil, gas, and coal.

Yes, we all know about the mountains of paperwork and forms to fill out before anything moves forward in France. But move forward it does, logically and steadily, if maddeningly slowly. And it’s all worth it in the end, because we reap the benefits of belonging to a system that’s “doing it right.”

From the moment we arrived here—despite all the difficulties of language and not knowing a soul here—we felt supported. Moving through different government departments, we encountered a rational, thoughtful, unrushed way of doing things, and received help from government staff every step of the way.

We soon began the process of purchasing a house in Alençon—a small municipality in Normandy, about 200 km southwest of Paris—and found ourselves navigating a universe of carefully planned regulations and funding programs aimed at making French homes warmer, greener, and more comfortable. And it is heartening that these programs are designed specifically to benefit average working people, and not just well-heeled home renovators.

When looking at heating choices in Canada, our Vancouver homeowner brains were wondering: “If we can’t use gas for heating and hot water, what’s left? And if it’s electricity, isn’t it expensive? And how about the ecological and environmental costs of generating electric power?”

In France there are many more central-heating-system options than are commonly available to Canadian home-owners. Examples include heat pumps, condensing boilers, wood-pellet or “biomass” burners, and solar-powered heating. Many are more eco-friendly than gas or oil, and more economical to run. But what makes them even more attractive are the generous government subsidies that can cover up to 100% of the costs of upgrading.

In Canada we tend to focus on automobile emissions and power generation as key areas to reduce carbon emissions. But according to a 2020 European Commission report, “Buildings are particularly energy-intensive, accounting alone for almost 45% of final energy consumption and 25% of greenhouse-gas emissions in France… [And] 7 million dwellings are poorly insulated and almost 4 million households struggle to pay their bills or deprive themselves of heating.”

From the beginning of July 2022, homeowners in France were prohibited from installing a new oil-fired furnace, and owners of new homes were prohibited from installing gas heating. The government of France declared that new installations of equipment for heating buildings or water must fall below a conservative greenhouse gas emission ceiling. Meaning you won’t be allowed to install an oil, gas, or coal-fired heating appliance except in exceptional circumstances.

The house of our dreams was a big 18th-century mansion with many floors, many rooms, fireplaces, and a lovely setting in the middle of Alençon. It was a two-minute walk from the historic round Halle au Blé, from our favourite sidewalk bistro, and from a great boulangerie (bakery). Lovely though it was, we faced the challenges common to owning houses built two or three centuries earlier: as well as the expected renovation of wooden floors and 300-year-old walls and ceilings, we would be facing bills for heating and energy-use very near the top of the chart.

Those gigantic fuel bills, and our general concern for reducing our own contributions to climate warming, made it obvious that we would have to spend many thousands of euros to bring the house up to something approaching 21st-century energy efficiency. We eventually decided against purchasing this house, but first we had a chance to explore what that process might look like.

In France, home buyers are very well protected. They’re given a wealth of information about the house that they hope to buy, and everyone involved takes the concept of vices cachés (“hidden defects”) very seriously. These can include everything from structural issues, to neighbouring development projects, to troublesome neighbours. And work done on the house, whether by a professional or a well-meaning do-it-yourselfer, is subject to a 10-year period of warranty called une garantie décennale.

In Canada, when you purchase a house you’ll sign a sales contract that might run five to 10 pages long. If you’re lucky, there may be a home inspection report as well, but it’s often a case of “buyer beware.” In France, you’ll be reading and initialling every page of a document well in excess of 100 pages, and sometimes much more than that.

As well as telling you everything you don’t want to know about the structure, the roof, and the presence of asbestos or lead paints, it will outline in detail how energy efficient the house is. It is government-mandated that you be told where your heating efficiency lies on a scale from an excellent A to a very sorry G, and how many CO2 emissions your home will generate over a year, also measured on a scale from A to G. Every real estate listing also includes the charts showing these ratings.

Fortunately, the French government also is very generous in helping homeowners improve both of these numbers. Depending on the project, the government will pay up to 100% of the costs of an upgrade, but the specific amounts depend on several factors. First, household income, and the number of people in residence. Unlike in Canada—where equivalent funding programs only look at how much is being spent—the funding available is much greater for homeowners with less income. Second, the extent of the improvement provided by the upgrade: Will your efficiency move from the bottom-most F or G levels to something in the middle, or will you reach the topmost A or B levels?

All of this work begins at the MaPrimeRénov website where homeowners can apply for funding to replace old heating systems, insulate their homes, and replace aging windows with new triple-glazed ones. There is also funding available for solar and geothermal heating, and for other ventilation improvements. The funding process is complex, but if you’re a homeowner, it’s too generous to ignore.

One of the biggest expenses we looked at would be a new furnace. The quote for that was approximately €20,000 (about US$20,000).  If we had purchased the house, we could have received significant financial assistance for a more sustainable form of heating. As well as exchanging the old furnace for a new heat-pump, pellet-burning, or geothermal unit, we also could have applied for funding to cover some or all of the other improvements listed above. We’re advised that we would have saved at least 60% of our household fuel bills.
To be funded, all of this work has to be completed by a professional installer: do-it-yourself tinkerers need not apply. And landlords must promise that the home will remain a tenant’s principal residence for at least five years after the work is finished—an Airbnb property won’t get the subsidy.

There are also programs to offer zero-interest bank loans to homeowners doing energy improvement work, through a program called éco-PTZ. Works that can be paid for with these loans include: roof, wall, window, and door insulation, and installation of renewable-powered heating. One of the benefits of taking out an éco-PTZ  loan is that there is no requirement to demonstrate income levels to support it. You must simply be the property owner.

From this September, anyone who wants to sell a property that is ranked in the F or G categories will also need to pay for an audit énergétique—a far more precise measure that aims to inform future buyers not only of their likely energy bills—but also of the cost of renovations needed to make the property fall into the B class. And in July, the new laws made it illegal for landlords to increase the rent of properties with ratings of F or G, and illegal to rent them out full-stop from 2025.

Living in North Vancouver, we were always made to feel guilty for the less-than-ideal environmental choices we’d made. Even when alternatives weren’t offered, were beyond our means, were untenable because of our age or situation, or, at best, were incredibly difficult and time-consuming to achieve. In France, it feels like the powers that be are truly helping citizens change their habits and lower their impacts.

When we finally find our new house in France, multiple financial incentives will make it much easier for us to renovate or replace inefficient heating systems, poor insulation, or draughty windows. The French government uses financial aid as a carrot incentive to encourage us to improve our home’s energy efficiency. There is no punitive stick of guilt or financial loss if we don’t have the means to pay. What our new government understands is that we won’t solve the climate crisis by only handing money to corporations. It’s often a much better investment to help individuals and families to make their houses green.

 

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In praise of librarians, defenders of the written word

Published: Globe and Mail
February 19, 2022
897 words

A note to librarians and public libraries:  Please feel free to republish this column as needed.  If you do so please let me know, or send me a copy, and make sure to credit myself, the Globe and Mail, and my website https://appalbarry.com.

In 1968, when I was 12 years old, my world was almost entirely defined by the science fiction that I read at the Kelowna, B.C., public library. I could name all of the spaceships in Robert Heinlein books, was intimately familiar with Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which in Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, and had read and reread I, Robot and The Martian Chronicles.

Inside the small one-story red-brick building on Ellis Street was a magic world that protected and comforted me. On those shelves I first discovered the seeds that germinated into almost every idea and belief that I have today.

I am embarrassed to admit that I don’t remember the names or faces of any of these librarians. But I remember the smell of the library, and the dust motes in the sunshine that streamed in from the big windows above the bookshelves. As I write I can feel myself pushing through the big double doors, turning left and walking into the big reading room for adults. I remember the counter where the librarians, with their ink pads and date stamps, waited to check out my books.

My family had moved to Kelowna from Calgary a few years earlier. I was the new kid. I wore glasses. I was picked on and bullied and was chosen last for every team. So I did what so many children like me do: I lived at the library, and inside the books that I brought home from its shelves.

I was a voracious reader. I’d burned through everything in the children’s section and was searching for something new. That’s when I asked one of those un-named librarians for help, and she led me out of the children’s room, and showed me the shelf of Robert Heinlein’s books for adult readers. She quietly explained to me that my library card was equally valid in either the children’s or adult section and that it would allow me to borrow any book in any part of the library. That librarian changed my life.

Twelve-year-old me couldn’t have expressed it in words, but I was overwhelmed by the honour, and the responsibility, of being told that, despite my age, I was allowed to read anything and everything in that library. For the first time in my life, I was being treated like an adult. I knew this was something special.

I remember beginning with Mr. Heinlein and Ray Bradbury and then moving on to other authors with a spaceship sticker on the spine of the book. As I scoured the shelves, I discovered that science fiction was not just about rocket ships and aliens, it was about societies and cultures.

Philip José Farmer took me along on The Fabulous Riverboat, and that twisted version of Tom Sawyer prompted me to discover the original Samuel Clemens. Ursula K. Le Guin upturned my understanding of politics and opened my eyes to characters that were neither male nor female, and surely prepared me for the coming decades of gay liberation, and now trans acceptance.

When I discovered Harlan Ellison’s groundbreaking Dangerous Visions and the sometimes drug-addled authors in that series, I realized that the world was much stranger and more fascinating than what I read in Kelowna’s The Daily Courier. And I learned that some books – such as Gore Vidal’s 1968 Myra Breckinridge – were best kept under cover for fear of outraging my father.

I stepped into the adult side of the library at a time when a seemingly endless stream of books not only explored “deviant” culture but also celebrated it as well. Reading about these dangerous and damaged people showed me that I wasn’t alone. That wasn’t something that I could learn from my family or friends. I had to learn it from books.

Being young means being unfocussed. At the same time I was devouring countercultural science fiction I was also throwing myself into non-fiction, scouring the Dewey Decimal system from the 100s – Witchcraft and Bulfinch’s Mythology – all the way down to the 900s and the Holocaust.

At 12, I already knew the horrors of Nazi Germany, and about the concentration camps at Buchenwald and Auschwitz. It never occurred to me that I might be too young to learn this part of our history.

Unfortunately, this path to enlightenment has been obstructed in McMinn County, Tenn., where the local school board recently removed Art Spiegelman’s landmark graphic memoir, Maus, from its curriculum.

McMinn County is not an isolated case. Across Canada and the United States, there are groups who demand that one book or another be removed from public view, from school curriculums, or from libraries. In the U.S. there have even been threats of criminal charges against public librarians.

Freedom to Read Week, which begins Feb. 20, is the time when our local librarians stand up for the books and authors that some people would ban. It’s also the time when some of us stand up to defend our librarians.

Every book in a library is there because a librarian believes it is worth reading. Unlike the self-appointed censors in Tennessee, my librarians in Kelowna were willing go the extra length to open doors and share the joy of learning with young people. Unlike the school board members in McMinn County, my librarians understood that reading widely and with abandon makes children stronger, and wiser, and sometimes kinder.

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What do you do with a small inheritance?

By Barry Rueger
Published: Globe and Mail 
October 7, 2022
1140 words

When my mother died last year her estate was small: clothing, knick-knacks, photos and the small bungalow, in Kelowna, B.C., that she bought for herself when my father died. My brother, sister and myself knew that a three-bedroom house in Kelowna’s Rutland neighbourhood wouldn’t afford us an early retirement, but Cameron McIntosh, an old high-school friend, now selling real estate for Royal LePage Kelowna, guessed that it might sell for as much as $650,000.

After decades working in small non-profit groups and charities, and then as a freelance writer, my savings are still pretty small. Like many Canadians, my investment background included two things: buying a home with a hefty mortgage, then selling it for marginal gains after a divorce, and a small registered retirement savings plan. For me, this inheritance will be about the biggest amount of money I will ever see.

My goal some time this year is to put my one-third share – say about $210,000 – toward a country home in France, where I now live. In the meantime, my question is: Between the time when I receive the cheque and when I’m ready to close my French house purchase, what should I do with what is a pretty large bit of money? It could just sit in my savings account, but is there a better route that might make me a little bit of money before we move it to France, and into euros, and buy that house?

I’ve never been in a position to do investing, so I asked some people who know that field. After talking to experts about what I should do, the answer turns out to be “not much” – but with a heavy proviso that we do live in interesting times. Between rising inflation, a war in Ukraine, rising interest rates and falling house prices, it seems that nothing is simple.

Andy Eisenbock is an investment adviser with Odlum Brown Ltd. in Vancouver, and someone my wife has worked with for several years. His advice was simple:

If the money is being held for my home purchase it should be in some form of liquid investment I can access at any time, and I should stay out of the stock market. He suggests that I need to watch the exchange rates between the Canadian dollar and euro, and investigate how best to make that currency conversion. He was right. At the moment the euro is at a historic low compared with the Canadian dollar. I’m crossing my fingers that it stays that way for a while longer, but am also comparing rates at my bank, and at money transfer services such as Wise.

Even though interest rates are rising, Mr. Eisenbock said that, for me, it was better to stay low risk, and liquid, than to try and chase a few hundred more dollars in potential income. That advice was echoed by Mark Tremblay, founder and director of Cinq, a French company that specializes in insurance and investments. I talked to Mr. Tremblay about what my options would be if I moved my money over to France instead of keeping it in Canada. His advice about liquidity and risk is much the same, but his suggestion is that in France many people would invest in l’assurance vie – life insurance. Savings plans based around life insurance are still very popular in France. As well as protecting your family should you die, they allow ordinary people to save for retirement over the term of their working lives.

L’assurance vie investments are very liquid – important if we’re buying a home. The safest place for my money would be a euro fund, a type of investment specific to life insurance, which provides significant security. It will give you a low fixed interest rate (around 1 per cent at the moment), but you will be sure to get your money back without any possible losses; the return is virtually zero-risk. We could get a slightly better rate with life insurance that includes a Unité de compte, or unit of account, an investment vehicle with more risk but better returns. And if more than 40 per cent of your life savings are in a UC, the interest rate is increased. In either a UC or a euro fund you’re encouraged by the government to keep your money there, saving for your retirement. Mr. Tremblay pointed out that after your investments have been in a euro fund for eight years, you’ll see a reduction in taxes paid on returns.

In Kelowna, I also talked with Steve Hatch, a wealth adviser with National Bank Financial. Right now interest rates are climbing, but I’m wondering whether they might come back down just as quickly. Mr. Hatch’s advice: If I believe that, I should choose the time frame I expect to park the money, and move it into a relatively safe place, such as a guaranteed investment certificate.

Or if I think rates will continue to climb, I could look at something like a money-market account with a variable rate that allow me to “reap the rewards of higher yields.” Ultimately, again, the choice is mine: more safety, or more return.

Mr. Hatch also has some Kelowna-specific advice: While home prices are dropping in major centres in Canada – in some cases by as much as 20 per cent – my mother’s modest bungalow may be immune to that drop because it still hits the sweet spot of being priced as a “starter home.”

There’s not a lot out there for single family residences between $500,000 and $750,000, he said. With that location and a price point of as much as $650,000, “I would hazard a guess that you’re probably going to get about the price that was suggested.”

The lawyer who has been handling the probate process for much of the past year says that even after the house has been sold it will likely be another two or three months before the proceeds arrive in my bank account. In the meantime, I’m left with more than enough time to choose the country where I will likely park this windfall, calculate my time frame, watch the currency exchange rates and determine the kind of security I’m comfortable with. Then I’ll need to put the cash in a safe, but income-generating, place.

The lawyer who has been handling the probate process for much of the past year says that even after the house has been sold it will likely be another two or three months before the proceeds arrive in my bank account. In the meantime, I’m left with more than enough time to choose the country where I will likely park this windfall, calculate my time frame, watch the currency exchange rates and determine the kind of security I’m comfortable with. Then I’ll need to put the cash in a safe, but income-generating, place.

 

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Save lives, money and reduce pollution: Why roundabouts are a solution for every city

Published: Globe and Mail
May 7, 2022
920 words

Round-aboutCOVID-19 restrictions are disappearing and France is expecting another one million Canadians to visit the country this year. Many will arrive after a lengthy flight, collect their luggage and clear customs at Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport, then climb into a rental car. Minutes later, they’ll suddenly find themselves immersed in a stream of French drivers circling around a traffic circle or rond-point. And once they’ve escaped that first traffic circle, they’ll immediately find themselves in a second, and a third, and in all likelihood, yet another.

Welcome to France, and the first of more than 30,000 traffic circles, the multilane roundabouts that challenge visiting drivers to learn new rules, new signs, a new language. They also provide no chance whatsoever to just stop and figure out where you’re going.

It is an item of faith in France that the roundabout was invented in Paris in 1907. The goal of its creator, the architect and urban planner Eugène Hénard, was to better manage the horse-and-carriage traffic throughout Paris. His first roundabout was at Place de l’Étoile in Paris, (since renamed Place Charles-de-Gaulle) where multiple lanes of circulating cars, motorbikes, vans and buses still circle around the Arc de Triomphe.

More specifically, these drivers battle for supremacy over 12 unmarked traffic lanes where cars entering the circle from the right have priority over everyone else. The result is legendary chaos and massive traffic jams.

Regardless of where traffic circles were invented, it was in Britain, not France, where they first became popular, with an explosion of construction in the 1950s and 60s, and a rethinking of how they functioned. It was the British who decided that incoming traffic should yield to those already on the circle. It was the success of this improvement that led to the adoption of the new British design in France.

The first French version of the “English roundabout” was opened in 1976 in Quimper, near Brittany’s Atlantic coastline. The rond-point’s official entry into the French Highway Code happened in 1983, the same year that decentralization moved much of town planning to local governments.

These town and village governments embraced the roundabout with enthusiasm. Since gaining popularity in the 1980s and 90s in France, roundabouts have been adopted in every corner of the country. And civic pride has led to another French tradition: the sculptures placed in the middle of the traffic circles. From the beautiful to the bizarre, these emblems of local pride have not only become important landmarks for lost tourists, but have led to websites, documentaries and Pinterest groups celebrating – or mocking – these roadside artworks.

The modern rules for French roundabouts are simple: Entering traffic must yield to the vehicles already circling. Once you’ve entered, keep to the inside, left-hand lane, with your left-hand-turn signal activated. Once you approach your exit, switch your signal to the right and move to the outside, right-hand lane, then exit. For drivers used to traffic lights and street corners, it can be nerve-racking to figure out which of the three, four, or even five exits you want, before you can change lanes and escape.

All of this happens while you’re watching both rear view mirrors and trying to spot a directional sign that almost never matches what your GPS is telling you. Having a spouse to act as navigator is a big help. (My wife Susan says that depends on which spouse is providing the navigation.)

Roundabouts aren’t just another French oddity – they’re actually a solution to a few problems that are faced by every town and city.

They completely eliminate stop-and-go traffic. Instead of dozens of cars sitting with their engines pumping out exhaust fumes at every red light, traffic moves constantly into and out of intersections. And because they do away with the need for stop lights or advanced left-turn signals, infrastructure maintenance costs are dramatically reduced. For small towns and villages, this saving is a valuable advantage.

Most importantly, though, roundabouts turn out to offer significant advantages in traffic safety. Every car entering a traffic circle has to slow down, so cars, trucks and buses move more slowly than usual. There are no red lights, so there are no drivers who accelerate through the intersection on a yellow. Deadly 90-degree collisions are a rarity in France. And because everyone moves in a counter-clockwise direction, and exits to the right, there’s little chance of cars appearing out of nowhere from your blind spot.

The result, according to a 2018 report by the European Commission, which examined 44 studies where junctions where converted to roundabouts, is a 41-per-cent reduction in traffic accident injuries and a 65 per cent reduction in fatal accidents.

In addition, a World Economic Forum report from December found the United States is saving lives and energy costs by replacing lights with roundabouts. It also notes that France has by far the most roundabouts per capita, about double the number per capita of the United Kingdom and Ireland.

“Here’s a controversial idea that turns conventional thinking about road safety on its head: traffic lights cause accidents, increase pollution and we’d be better of without them,” starts the report.

Still, when your jet-lagged self is suddenly dealing with multiple roundabouts, you’ll appreciate the two big secrets to manoeuvring around them. First, it’s okay to circle two or even three times until you know where you’re going. Second, in the event you take the wrong exit, in all likelihood there’s another roundabout just ahead, so it’s easy to double back to where you got it wrong.

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Get to know your banker and do your homework when moving your money out of Canada

Published: Globe and Mail
February 26, 2022
1185 words

Last year, when we moved from Vancouver to France, my wife Susan and I joined the several thousand Canadians who leave the country each year to settle elsewhere in the world. It was a permanent move, and we believed that we had planned carefully for every eventuality.

We were mostly correct, except for one thing: Our bank worked incredibly hard to keep us from moving the money from our house sale to our new country. Our first month in France was spent on international phone calls, talking to bank employees at several levels, sorting out conflicting advice, and having our account frozen a half-dozen times. To those following in our footsteps, we say: Take nothing for granted.

Like many Canadians our relationships with our banks began and ended with websites and bank machines. The only time when we actually sat down with a bank employee would have been every few years for mortgage renewals.

That’s not enough. If you’re planning an international move you’ll need to work on establishing a much closer relationship with your banker. As described by Joe Reid, Vancity credit union’s vice-president for wealth management and impact investing, you should begin early in the planning process by talking to “your trusted advisers … your lawyer, your accountant, any of your professional advisers.” That necessarily includes someone at your bank with experience in handling international money transactions.

Begin this process immediately upon deciding to move internationally, and when you meet with a representative at your local bank, be prepared to question them. Not all bankers have experience in this area, and they may need to pass you on to someone else who knows the ins and outs of large funds transfers, exchange rates and money laundering rules.

Beyond your bank, take time to thoroughly review things such as pensions, registered retirement savings plans and other investments, and especially your will. Inheritance rules in other countries can be very different. You may need two different wills, and an understanding of how your children can avoid inheritance taxes in your new country. You’ll also need to make sure that your family members understand the steps that they’ll need to take when you die.

John Lyng was a customer of Toronto-Dominion Bank for more than two decades when he and his wife left Canada for France. “I thought I had a good relationship with them,” he says, but when he needed to borrow money to secure a lease on an apartment in Paris he found himself turned down even though they were about to sell a home in downtown Toronto. Because Mr. Lyng was new to France, the landlord demanded that he place three years of rent payments in an escrow account or with a guarantor that would guarantee his ability to make rent payments.

His TD banker apparently had no experience in France and refused the loan.  “It’s a very unusual way of doing it,” the banker told Mr. Lyng of the landlord’s request. Mr. Lyng eventually found a loan through a mortgage broker.

We relate Mr. Lyng’s experience with TD only as an example. He’s a member of the popular Canadians in France group on Facebook; other group members, using various Canadian banks, tell similar stories.

“Please be aware that TD customers have several options for transferring funds out of country,” a spokesperson for the bank said in response to an e-mailed query from The Globe and Mail.

Vancity’s Mr. Reid is more specific in advising people leaving Canada: Understand that the rules will be different in other places, both in government and at individual banks. Although technically there’s no limit on the size of a transfer that you can make, individual banks have their own internal rules, and almost all international transfers above $10,000 will be reported to the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FinTRAC). As well, you need to understand that even if your local banker is prepared to move funds to you in France (or wherever), the receiving bank may have its own barriers, or may require that you meet local anti-money-laundering rules.

In many cases, it isn’t possible to open a bank account in a foreign country until you arrive. In France, for instance, you invariably will be asked to provide a copy of a current electric bill to prove your residence, and it may take weeks for the new account to be active. In the meantime, don’t cancel your Canadian cellphone number. You can be sure that at least one financial institution will insist that you can’t log in without them sending you a secret code to a Canadian phone number.

Once you’re finally in your new home, and have your new bank account set up, you should still expect surprises from Canada. Mr. Lyng was settled in the suburbs of Paris, and every month arranged to transfer a few thousand dollars from Canada to France for living expenses. Until one day he couldn’t.

“For about one year I was able to do wire transfers, I was able to call the branch manager at the TD branch and they would do it. Until about three years ago when they said ‘we have new security precautions … if you want to do a wire transfer you need to come into the branch in person.’”

When Mr. Lyng explained that spending thousands of dollars to fly to Canada and stay in a hotel made no sense, the bank suggested that he write himself a cheque on his TD account and deposit that in France. According to Mr. Lyng, the cheque bounced when TD claimed there were no funds in his account to honour it.

Since then, Mr. Lyng has done what many other Canadians in Europe do. He relies on a money-transfer company to move funds out of his bank account and into his French one. Companies such as Wise and TorFX can make this easier, and often also offer better exchange rates and lower service charges than the Canadian banks.

Sharon Anne Kean, is senior director of global expansion at Wise, one of the leaders in global money transfer services, and one of the companies frequently recommended on the Canadians in France Facebook group. Ms. Kean’s advice echoes that of Vancity’s Mr. Reid: Start planning early, especially if you need to move large amounts for a home purchase. Like the banks, she says Wise takes security seriously. That means making sure the sender is who they say they are, “but then also doing a check on where you’re sending money to, such as a sales agreement for your new home, or something that verifies that the money is going to a good place.”

Ms. Kean also encourages customers to do their homework. In particular, understand that the “best exchange rate” quoted by your bank may include hidden fees that make it less attractive than what Wise might charge. “That’s a massive revenue stream for most banks. That’s why our rates appear to be more competitive.” Ms. Kean says that both their consumer and corporate customers also appreciate that Wise moves money much faster than the big banks.

 

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A move to France helped us discover not just where we felt at home, but how we wanted to live

Published: Globe and Mail 
January 14, 2020
947 words

Our decision to move to France from Canada was an easy one. The food, the culture and even the politics were a better fit for the life that we wanted to live. Along with our cat, Beatrice, we arrived in Bordeaux in mid-October and settled into a nice cottage in the Dordogne, a rural department in southwestern France.

For the first two weeks, we marvelled at the green rolling countryside around us, at the friendly people, and at the array of delicious meats and vegetables that we found at the weekly farmers’ markets and even in large supermarkets. We knew immediately that France was our heaven, but we also knew that the Dordogne was not where we wanted to live, work and build a life.

In the months before our move, we had identified the places that we thought would make a good home, but searching online and actually visiting them are two very different things, so we loaded up our new car and set out on a road trip that would take us more than 3,000 kilometres over two weeks.

Our starting point was Normandy, beginning in the Perche region. Perche is close to both Paris and London, and is imbued with the kind of energy and drive that we we’re used to. We are in France to launch a new music festival, not to retire, so that energy is appealing. Like the Dordogne, Normandy is remarkably beautiful, and has no shortage of the lovely old stone farmhouses that we felt were destined to be our dream home. The area has always been a favourite for British expats, but has also been popular with Parisiens trying to escape crowded city life since COVID began. That proximity is one of the big attractions to living in Normandy. Paris is only a 90-minute trip on the trains. London is further, but whether taking the train, or taking our car via the Channel Tunnel, it’s still an easy weekend trip for a show or to see friends.

We spent a week as guests at La Bellême Bleue Maison d’Hôtes, a restored 17th-century residence, then left to travel east and south to Burgundy. An otherwise dull day on the expensive French tollways was redeemed by a trip to the legendary Chartres cathedral. I expected this would just be a tourist stop, but in many ways it changed how I saw our future lives.

The beauty and majesty of the Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Chartres are well known, but what affected me most was the age of the building. Canada is a country little more than 150 years old. When I was a schoolchild, our history barely extended past Confederation in 1867.

This cathedral, on the other hand, has been standing for more than a thousand years. I looked up at walls that are 900 years old; at the Sancta Camisia, the tunic said to have been worn by Mary at the birth of Jesus; and at marble sculptures that had been damaged by mobs 200 years ago during the French Revolution.

At Chartres, I was looking at history in ways that had simply never been possible at home, and was beginning to see how this long embrace of the historical past influences everything about France.

After a day and night in Burgundy and Chablis, we made our way down to Provence. We were saddened to see that the fabled southern paradise where my wife Susan spent much of her young adulthood has been overrun with tourists, motorhomes and advertising. We spent a day retracing Susan’s path through hilltop towns like Gordes, finally ending at the fabled ochre mining town of Roussillon.

The surrounding red cliffs are breathtaking, but we chose to turn uphill and follow the winding streets to the very top of the town and L’Église Saint Michel De Roussillon.

Even though religion has never been part of my life, I was swept away by the antiquity of the church, and by the centuries of liturgical artworks displayed, but most profoundly by the stunning statue of the Archangel Saint Michael defeating Satan. Something about this image wrapped itself around my thoughts, and kept me questioning what, if anything, I was doing in my life that could possibly compete with that act – or even with the power of the many artworks depicting it.

It was becoming obvious that in moving to France, my goal was not just to make a living, but to explore the ways that I could build a true legacy.

We spent the evening wandering the winding narrow streets of old Montpellier. Surrounded by crowds of partying students (a quarter of Montpellier’s 277,000 population), I was struck by the feeling that these ancient, cobbled avenues were as alive and vibrant as at any time in the last thousand years. I suddenly understood that ancient and historic don’t need to be dull or quiet.

The next morning, baguettes and charcuterie in hand, we set out on the last leg of our voyage, to the heart of the Occitanie, and the place where we’ll make our new home. The hilltop village of Lauzerte also dates back to the medieval, and like much of France preserves the architecture and heritage of that era while accommodating delivery vans and the new fibre-optic internet that runs to the ancient homes.

As much as we love our modern conveniences – I can’t imagine travelling the winding roads in France without GPS – we’re equally in love with the sense of permanence, and the understanding that you can preserve that history while still living in the current age. As we begin the process of choosing and purchasing our new home in France, we’re consciously seeking that balance.

 

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Holding onto history

Published: Globe and Mail  (PDF)
December 18, 2021
1258 words

Even though I knew my grandmother for more than 50 years, I had never heard this story of how my family moved from Hagersville, Ont., to the wilds of Western Canada. Some time around 1912, my great-grandfather, Wellington Millard, was afflicted by serious asthma. Because he could no longer live near the smoky Hamilton steel mills, the family decided to leave Ontario for the clean air of Dorintosh, Sask.

While my great-grandparents and six of their children headed west, my grandmother Hazel stayed behind with her mother’s mother, Margaret Dale. Margaret believed the far-fetched stories about blood-thirsty wolves, harsh winters, and the general lawlessness of the West and wanted to be sure that at least one family heir would survive if her fears proved true.

The only reason that I know this story is because my cousin, Crystal Oliver, made a point of recording it in the years before Grandma died.

My mother, Evelyn Rueger, was Hazel’s daughter. In September, aged 94, Mom died of COVID-19. Several weeks later, I drove from Vancouver to Kelowna to meet with my sister Kathy to go through Mom’s house and see what was worth keeping. I knew that most of what was in the house was very old, and of little interest, but it was a job that we had to do.

Like my grandmother, my mom kept everything. As well as records, CDs and VHS tapes, there were decades of Christmas decorations and small appliances from the seventies. We found an electric spin-dryer that predated the modern washing machine that Mom bought with her first pension cheque. Adult clothes, teenagers’ clothes, kids’ and babies’ clothes. And, in an unlocked safe in her bedroom, an urn with my father’s ashes, together with the ashes of three of her previous cats.

Kathy and I didn’t try to make sense of all of this junk. Instead we spent hours looking at family photos. In corners throughout the house we found dozens of photo albums, each packed with pictures of family, both close and distant, each page stirring memories of things that happened decades ago. We looked at pictures of relatives, all looking young and hopeful with their lives ahead of them, many of them now dead. And we looked at similar pictures of ourselves, as children, and teens, and as young adults.

What struck me though was the almost complete absence of anything to do with my father, Ralph. It was not a good relationship, and apparently Mom had quietly purged anything to do with him. Or perhaps there were just never very many pictures of him. All that I know is that at some point he no longer played a large part in my mother’s history, which means that my sister and I can only rely on our own memories to fill that gap.

It was late on Monday when my sister Kathy finally left – saying to me for the first time in her life, “I love you.” Ours is a family that doesn’t say such things for fear of ridicule. That, sadly, is the legacy of my father.

It was only after Kathy left that I found the last box of old documents – letters that I wrote home 40 years ago, more old pictures, wills from several relatives and finally a big, fat Cerlox bound book about my grandmother. Where a Rose Once Bloomed is the family history that I never knew existed.

I did not know that my cousin Crystal was a writer, but in 104 pages she told the entire life story of my grandmother Hazel. In the two years before my grandmother died, Crystal somehow uncovered dozens of anecdotes and stories that I had never heard, and dozens of photos of my grandmother, her parents and their parents as well. I can’t begin to describe what an incredible labour of love this must have been.

Her work and her storytelling ability brought my grandmother back to life. This book made me feel, for the first time, a real connection to her side of our family, and an understanding of the importance of knowing its history. Because I was able to understand my grandmother as a living, breathing person, I was able to understand where I came from, and why I am the person I am today.

And at that moment I came to the realization that my own family has only a part of that knowledge. There are no letters or documents. We have only scattered memory of old stories and family history. We have pictures, but most often no context within which to place them. Even when we recognize the people in old photos, we have no way of knowing the places and times, or why the pictures were taken.

Thanks to Crystal we now have a good history of my mother’s side of the family, but we have literally nothing to tell us our father’s story. We know next to nothing of his childhood and youth, and even less about his first wife. I certainly can’t tell you what motivated him, or what made him so damaged. I can’t tell you why Madge, the nearly mythical first wife, killed herself by walking in front of a train. I am sure that there once were paper records that might have led us to answers, but they all seem to be gone.

And now that my mother is dead, I can see no way to ever collect that history. This makes me very sad.

Surrounding ourselves in those memories was the best thing that we could have done to honour my mother. Each of those tiny images on paper, some colour, some black and white, and some faded almost to nothing, captures a specific moment in time and preserves it in way that is almost lost by our streaming culture. TikTok will never replace Polaroid and Kodak for permanence, and a Facebook post can’t possibly resonate the way a 5-by-7 inch photograph does. Scrolling on the internet will never be as evocative as the tactile experience of turning pages in a big black photo album and pointing to pictures and sharing the stories behind them.

If there is one lesson to be learned from my experience, it is this: Take the time and effort to talk to family members and collect their stories. Interview your parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles, and write down your own histories. Even if you think you will never want it, this is important. If not for you, then for your children, or your grandchildren.

And collect all of those old photos, and paste them into albums, and write beside each one who is in it, what was happening and when. It will take time, and effort, and will seem old fashioned, but you’re doing this for family members who will find it in 50 years – or a hundred. You cannot imagine how much they will treasure your work, and how much it will enlighten them.
Instead of abandoning your family history to Facebook or Instagram, print it out and save it in a drawer or a shoebox. Computer hard drives crash, and even the biggest social-media companies can disappear. A cupboard full of books and albums in your home can last forever.

Crystal is urging me to take up the challenge and begin building my own family’s history. I don’t know if it’s even possible, but she is making me believe that I may be able to do it.

I’m hoping it’s not too late. I surely understand why it’s so important.

 

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How to Move Abroad and Keep Earning Money

Published: Real Simple Magazine
May 17, 2021
1176 words

For many of us, the pandemic years of 2020-2021 have wildly changed how we approach work and earning. Maybe you’ve gone fully remote and want to stay that way; maybe you’re planning a semi-retirement that involves downsizing just how much work you do. Maybe, like me, you’re making a long-held dream of moving to another country a reality. But if you’re emigrating and planning to earn money in a new country, things can get complicated fast, especially where taxes and work visas are concerned.

My wife and I are preparing to move to France this year; the selling price of our Vancouver home will buy us a lovely rural property in the Dordogne, with money left over. Although yes, we could just live off the proceeds of this sale, we both really want to keep working—me as a writer, my wife as a pianist and teacher.

Here’s how we’re planning to make the move across the globe, downsize our working lives somewhat, and yet still earn money in a foreign country in our semi-retirement.

(full article)

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Car-Free Parenting

Published: Asparagus Magazine
April 30, 2021
1046 words

As an on-again-off-again cyclist, I’ve always had a grudging admiration for those people who choose to ride everywhere, all of the time. I know people on Vancouver’s North Shore who ride to and from work — up to 25 kilometres away — every day, and even more that ride for fun and fitness. I can actually see myself commuting with rain gear and a briefcase, but what would happen if I also had a family to transport?

I asked North Vancouver District councillor Mathew Bond. When Bond’s daughter Wilhelmina was born, he didn’t rush out to buy a minivan: he decided to stick with his bright red 2016 Ezee Expedir cargo bike. When he became a father, Bond stepped back from his career as a transportation systems engineer for BC’s Ministry of Transport and became a stay-at-home dad. Because his work as a city councillor tends to be confined to evenings, he’s free during the day to parent.

Wilhelmina is now 6, with a 3-year-old sister named Coral. Bond still loads them onto the back of his bike and rides with them all over the hills and streets of North Vancouver.

A basic cargo bike like the Benno Carry On can be purchased for under US$1,500, but if you add extra carrying capacity and electric-assist, prices can quickly reach five times that number. So before you spend that much money, you really need to make sure it’s the right choice for you. Bond says he bought his cargo bike before they were all the rage, and he chose an electric version to take on the hills in his area.

Ask lots of questions

Bond cautions the curious to test ride these bikes before making a commitment. “My suggestion to people thinking about a cargo bike is to go borrow or rent one. Try it out, see what it’s like, even if it’s just for a day or just for a ride,” he says. “If you haven’t been biking in a long time, or you’re not a person that bikes regularly, try a little trip to the grocery store. I regularly put $300 worth of groceries on the bike. Carry some other things around before you carry your children around on it.”

Try it out, see what it’s like, even if it’s just for a ride.

But Bond’s biggest tip is a simple one: get advice from people already riding. In Vancouver, there are family biking Facebook pages, which include members that are taking their kids on cargo bikes. Social media offers a community that can answer questions about what type of bike will work best for each person’s circumstances. You can ask questions like: What kind of gear do you need, and where can you get it? Who has the best shops and the best services?
“And get a buddy and do a few rides… while they’re out and about on their cargo bike,” says Bond. “See where they go, what they do and how they do it. And ask them to come with you on your first few rides, or when you’re trying something like carrying a large load.”

Kid safety

If you’re planning on loading your kids onto the bike, you have a whole new set of concerns, according to Bond. First off, is helmet safety: “You have to wait till your child’s head fits a helmet.”

Bond started each of his girls riding up front in a seat between his arms. When Bond’s youngest, Coral, started riding, he added a second seat on the back of the bike for Wilhelmina. Eventually both Bond’s girls wound up riding on the rear carrier. If you’ve got two small people on the back of a bike, face them away from one another so they don’t knock helmets.

Learn your bike and your hood
The father of two also has some advice for those in the driver’s seat. “Make sure you’re comfortable. Build up your confidence, and learn your routes,” he says. “Take your kids on a ride in the park, somewhere safe, and then kind of build up from there.” He’s also the former president of the North Shore Mountain Bike Association and believes that cycling with his girls gives them a better understanding of their hometown. While most kids travel in a rear-facing car seat, his girls are riding along with him.

“Kids have a lot less freedom nowadays,” says Bond. “Because they get driven around, they don’t even understand their own neighbourhood. I think developing that kind of sense of place is important.”

As well as helping his daughters to map out their own hometown, the bike trips build confidence and knowledge in his daughters. “The girls know how to get to Lynn Valley, or their friend’s house. Wilhelmina can give me directions: ‘Okay, it’s this way. And let’s go here; let’s go there. Remember when we saw that animal here?’”

Consider storage options

Bond’s final piece of cargo-bike advice is to think carefully about storage. If you live in a condo or apartment, or if you have to navigate a small elevator, what are the best places to park and lock your bike? And if it’s electric, where can you plug in to charge it?

Bond has a parking space with a regular electrical outlet, but had to ask his strata for permission. And then they had to figure out how much to charge him.

After years of riding everywhere on a cargo bike, juggling kids, and home, and council work, Bond is happy with his choices. “When I tell people I use it for almost all my everyday trips, many are stunned, but also excited, and ask ‘Well, how do you . . . ?’”

When I tell people I use it for almost all my everyday trips, many are stunned, but also excited.

Growing up on the back of a cargo bike has one more important benefit for Bond’s daughters. It’s no surprise that Wilhelmina is proud that she can now ride on her own.

“I already knew how to pedal when I was 4,” she says. “I practised and practised… I first started with no pedals. Then I said, ‘I have enough balance Papa.’ Then I tried the pedals.”

And when asked if she had ever fallen: “Yeah. But not too hard.”